“Well, well, well,” Ned murmured to himself with a smile as he got to his feet. “If it isn’t the best Cecilia of them all, falling like manna from heaven right into my hands.”

Cecilia had seen the houses rising like hot-air balloons over the trees—albeit rectangular, rigid, and less colorful, without flames beneath, so in fact nothing like hot-air balloons, but a failure of simile was the least of her problems at this moment. She actually resorted to running down the lane, skirts hoisted to her knees, stockings exposed. But there was no one to see her disgraceful behavior. There was no one at all.

Only a lady’s bonnet tumbled over the grass in the magic-stirred breeze, ribbons fluttering wistfully.

Cecilia stopped in the middle of the field, staring at its emptiness. The houses were dwindling into the northeast distance. The silence was like a slap, leaving her dazed.

“Goodness gracious,” she said, and took off her hat.

“There’s no need to be quite so dramatic.”

Cecilia sighed. Aggravation clenched around her—and yet it felt almost pleasant, a sense of relief. She was not alone in the world after all.

Flicking her hat to unsheath the blades in its brim, she spun on her heel—only to find a pistol pointed at her. Behind it, Captain Lightbourne smiled affably. He reached out with his free hand, took her hat, and tossed it as far as a disk of straw decorated with ribbons and a feather would go—which is to say, about one and a half feet, before boomeranging back so that he had to step aside before its blades sliced him.

“We meet again, Miss Bassingthwaite.”

“Captain Lightbourne,” Cecilia replied. “I seem to have been mistaken in my impression that you serve Lady Armitage. Clearly you are Captain Morvath’s lackey.”

“Not at all.”

Cecilia frowned. “What do you mean, sir? Which of those are you not?”

“Both.”

Her frown deepened. “You are being most annoyingly ungrammatical. And I have a ladies’ society to rescue. So if you will excuse me—”

She went to turn but he cocked the hammer of his gun, and she froze.

“You wouldn’t shoot me.”

His smile tilted. “I am employed to assassinate you, madam.”

“And yet you have proven slow to do so.”

“That is because I am employed to protect you.”

For the first time in her life, Cecilia went so far as to scowl. “You are a very aggravating man.”

“Thank you. I do my best under difficult circumstances. It’s an honor to have provoked your anger, although I’m still hoping to make you smile.”

“I do not smile at murderers.”

“But I haven’t murdered anyone, Miss Bassingthwaite.”

“So my aunt was correct in her evaluation of your skill, or rather lack thereof.”

His own smile tilted in the other direction, then collapsed completely. “No. That is, I mean to say—I could have murdered someone, had I chosen to do so. Just as I could murder you right now.”